Distinguished historian Ferguson and renowned futurist Schwartz disagree profoundly on the nature of human progress. Both use scenarios (called "counterfactual history" by Ferguson) to analyze how events play out. Ferguson wrote THE WAR OF THE WORLD (2006), a history of the violence that defined the 20th Century. Schwartz wrote THE ART OF THE LONG VIEW (1991), the standard text on scenario planning, and THE LONG BOOM (1999), on global prosperity in the 21st century. Both speakers regard history as highly contingent. The question is, contingent on what?

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The Seminars About Long-term Thinking were started in 02003 to build a coherent, compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking, to help nudge civilization toward Long Now's goal of making long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare.